Chapter 3309: Nemesis

Yu Leng quickly manipulated the jade butterflies, causing them to turn into streaks of light that cut his way out and let him escape from the card’s pocket dimension.

The card shattered, and Yu Leng escaped, gasping for breath. His entire body was a mess, and the skin that still remained looked ready to slough off at any moment.

Countless jade butterflies had died around him, and even more jade dragonflies were dead. They littered the ground.

Off in the distance, four headless corpses lay bleeding out, the ground beneath them stained as the blood flowed into the sea.

Hu Liu appeared, and he looked no better off than Yu Leng. He tore his own skin apart, ripping them off in strips, along with the flesh beneath them. The sight was grisly enough that even Yu Leng felt a shiver of fear when he looked down at the little insect on his fingertip. Just what had the bug done to Hu Liu?

The man was suffering from unbearable pain that far exceeded anything he had ever experienced before. Blood drenched his entire body, but he still had not forgotten his desire to kill Yu Leng.

His card had been destroyed, and his hand was a mangled mess. He stared at Yu Leng through bloodshot eyes.

Yu Leng stared back at his opponent. "Do you still want to keep going?"

Hu Liu gritted his teeth, enduring pain that Yu Leng could not even imagine. The man picked up the broken sword of his fallen comrade from the ground and then started to slowly walk towards Yu Leng, one step at a time.

Yu Leng was amazed. "You’re impressive, but you’re still going to die. No one will leave this planet alive."

As he spoke, more jade butterflies flew forward. There were only a dozen remaining, but they were enough to form a streak of light that slashed down.

Hu Liu growled and swung the broken sword. He unleashed the Eleventh Sword: Origin’s Crack.

He had gone to the Tower of the Fifth and inherited the Thirteen Swords.

With Origin’s Crack, the stream of light was sliced through, and ten jade butterflies shattered.

Yu Leng was horrified, and he immediately tore through the void to flee. Hu Liu tried to stop him from escaping, but unbearable pain overwhelmed him, and he lost consciousness.

If Yu Leng had been even a second slower, Hu Liu would have died.

Hu Liu had released the only attack that he could while enduring so much pain.

As the sky grew dark, the tide rose and covered the beach. The scent of blood attracted various sea creatures, and a sharp-toothed fish approached Hu Liu as the water rose. It bit the man, but its teeth could not even break his skin. After all, Hu Liu was equal to an Envoy, and his physical strength was far beyond what an ordinary fish could handle.

Still, the bite did manage to wake Hu Liu.

Hu Liu instantly sat up, gasping for air. The fish fled in terror, quickly followed by the rest of the nearby sea creatures.

As the sea breeze pricked at his skin, Hu Liu took a long time to regain his senses. Powerful fear filled his eyes. That pain was something he would never forget for the rest of his life. It had been truly unimaginable, and he had wanted to tear his entire body to shreds and destroy himself entirely in order to escape it.

But when had he been affected? He had attacked the moment the new bug appeared, and it had not managed to get anywhere close to him. So, when had Hu Liu been attacked?

He looked down at his hands, which were little more than mangled flesh. Every inch of his body had been torn apart, but compared to the pain he had suffered because of that insect, Hu Liu’s current pain felt more like relief.

A fate worse than death. That was truly a fate worse than death.

Hu Liu pulled out some medicine from his cosmic ring and consumed it. His flesh wounds healed easily, as they had not been afflicted by any kind of battle technique or infested with any foreign energy.

By noon, Hu Liu released a long breath and rose to his feet. At the moment, he was almost completely submerged by the rising sea water.

His companions' bodies had been washed away by the tide and were now gone.

Silently, Hu Liu searched until he finally found his friends’ bodies. They were covered with bite marks from different sea creatures, though most of the creatures had not been able to penetrate the flesh of Enlighter-level cultivators.

Burdened by the bodies of his companions and his hatred for Yu Leng, Hu Liu returned to the Lost Clan’s universe.

The grudge formed in the Sixverse Academy, as well as the deaths of his companions led to Hu Liu vowing revenge.

No matter how intense the pain might become, he would never give up. He would kill that man, no matter what it took.

After returning to the Lost Clan, Hu Liu was punished. Despite having learned of Yu Leng’s whereabouts, he had not reported it to the Heavens Sect. Instead, he and his companions had privately formed a team to capture the man, which had led to the deaths of Hu Liu’s companions and Yu Leng’s escape. It was a grave offense.

Hu Liu did not try to argue and calmly accepted the punishment.

He deeply regretted not informing his people and taking some true experts along. That incident might have been their only opportunity to capture Yu Leng, and it had been wasted.

It was the biggest mistake of Hu Liu’s life.

“What did you say? Overwhelming pain?” Shan Zheng went to speak to Hu Liu and ask about his battle with Yu Leng.

When Hu Liu had recounted the incident, hearing it caused Shan Zheng’s face to turn pale. A powerful fear slowly blossomed deep in his eyes, and it steadily grew. When the man grabbed Hu Liu, he was in a state of panic. “Pain, overwhelming pain? Are you sure?”

Hu Liu felt quite confused. “Yes, it was a type of pain that left me wanting to tear myself apart. It was caused by a small insect.”

Shan Zheng immediately left, only to quickly return with an ancient document. It was of an image, which was the exact same bug that had induced Hu Liu’s pain. “Is this what you saw?”

Hu Liu nodded, feeling a lingering fear at the sight of the bug. “Yes, that’s it. But how did you know, Ancestor?”

Shan Zheng stood in stunned silence. The ancient book fell from his hands, as though all strength had fled the man’s body. He looked utterly devastated and lost in his own confusion.

“They’ve come. They’re actually here... Are they coming for us? They’re here!” With those words, Shan Zheng vanished.

Hu Liu had no idea what had happened, but his instincts screamed that it was something monumental.

...

In the Heavens Sect, Lu Yin was toying with a jade-colored orb. The entire thing was colored jade, and it looked quite exquisite. The insects within the orb were also of the same jade color. It was from a fascinating civilization.

Lu Yin was unable to control the insects. According to the others, only the first person to discover an orb would be able to control the insects within it, which seemed rather arbitrary. Those people did not form any sort of bond with the orbs, nor did they practice any unique techniques that allowed them to control the insects. So what was the source of the restriction?

Could the bugs be similar to certain other creatures, where they imprinted upon the first creature they saw?

As time passed, Lu Yin learned that more and more people had received the inheritance of this insect civilization. Some of the people were good, while others were evil. Lu Yin had tried crushing a criminal’s jade-colored orb, and the moment it had shattered, everything within it had disappeared, including all the insects.

Strangely, there had been no spatial fluctuations. There should have been insects within the orb, but as soon as it shattered, the insects had simply disappeared.

"Dao Monarch, Great Elder Shan Gu is requesting an audience."

𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Let him in," Lu Yin replied. He was sitting by the lake, and he set the jade orb on a stone table.

When Great Elder Shan Gu arrived, he looked distraught. The moment he laid eyes on Lu Yin, his attention fell to the jade orb, and the old man’s expression changed drastically. His face grew even paler, and he looked almost entirely devoid of all color.

Lu Yin felt quite puzzled. "Senior, what's wrong?"

Shan Gu stared blankly at the orb. "Why are we facing them again? Will we never be able to escape? We really can’t... escape."

Lu Yin stared at the old man, and then he looked at the orb. Suddenly, he realized something, and his expression fell. "This... this isn’t your nemesis from your original megaverse, is it?"

Great Elder Shan Gu took in a deep breath. He closed his eyes, and finally nodded. "Lord Lu, disaster... is here."

Lu Yin’s eyes flickered. "Tell me everything in detail."

Shan Gu’s voice was filled with bitterness as he spoke. His eyes never left the jade orb, and he seemed to be somewhat dazed as he walked over and picked it up. "Nest... Oh, Nest. I thought that we’d escaped from you forever. I never imagined that I’d see you again.

"My Lost Clan is from a megaverse that was quite similar to this Tianyuan Megaverse. There were two races locked in an ongoing war for supremacy. One side was humanity, which included my Lost Clan and other human civilizations. Our nemesis, the force that we fought against, were the Nests..."

As the Great Elder recounted his people’s past, Lu Yin’s face darkened, and it soon matched the old man’s expression. Lu Yin struggled against a growing sense of frustration.

How could this happen? They were about to be invaded by the Spirit Nidus, but now, they were suddenly facing another threat? What was this about Nest?

The jade-colored orbs were called Nests. Each one held nine smaller orbs within them, each of those corresponded to a different insect species. These insects were the creatures that were responsible for wiping out all human civilization in the Lost Clan’s original megaverse. Their civilization had once been glorious and powerful, and they had even produced cards that were capable of countering True God’s ultimate techniques. They had also had powerhouses capable of traversing the River of Aeons, and others, like the Royal Regent, who had wielded unparalleled power.

The humans of that megaverse had been at least as powerful and successful as the humans in the Tianyuan Megaverse.

Even so, all of those civilizations had eventually been wiped out, and it had all been done by these insects.

The despair that the bugs had brought to the human civilizations had been no less than the despair created by Aeternus. It was hard to imagine an entire megaverse swarming with insects as various species had fought each other for survival, devouring each other. There had been many life-and-death struggles between the two civilizations, and one side had to be annihilated for the other to survive.

"Battle after battle, blood stained the stars. It was the most terrifying war that I have ever seen. The swarms of insects blotted out the sky, striking fear deep into people’s very souls. There was an instinctive pressure to survive as a species, and it never let up. That was at the Third Rampart," Great Elder Shan Gu recalled, his eyes filled with the lingering fear from the ancient war.

No matter how far one’s cultivation might progress, fear would always be an innate part of being human.

The Great Elder was no exception to this. He feared those insects, and he made no attempt to hide his fear. Those bugs had almost destroyed an entire megaverse.

"But didn’t you eventually win that war? The insects were defeated, and it was that invincible being that forced you to escape," Lu Yin interjected.

Shan Gu’s voice carried both weariness and bitterness. "It wasn’t until the very end that we learned the truth: the Nests were created by that invincible being.

"That being is known as the Immortal Lord.

“Each Nest consists of nine smaller orbs that together form a single, larger jade-colored orb. Each small orb contains a different insect species.

“These insects, ranked from weakest to strongest, are Jade Warden, Sentinel Waltz, Thousand Shards, Lithic Drake, Septastar Blade, Sky Orchid, Ghost Orchid, Scrollbane Centipede, and Verdant Sage.

"Jade Warden refers to the jade-colored dragonflies, which are the simplest bugs to use. They devour energy—any kind of energy—and send it back to their master, accelerating that person’s cultivation. They can appear in limitless numbers, which leads to cultivation speeds that increase exponentially rather than linearly.

"Sentinel Waltz is a jade-colored butterfly that has incredibly sharp wings. Wherever they fly, there is death. They can combine to form weapons, and their power depends on the master’s ability, as well as whether there are ten, a hundred, or 10,000 of the butterflies. The power can vary greatly. Still, even at their peak, they can only match up to the destructive force of an Envoy.

"Thousand Shards is a small, jade-colored flying insect that is covered with barbs. Their only ability is to shoot those barbs into enemies. Doing so inflicts excruciating pain that no one can endure. This pain is so unbearable that the victims want to tear themselves apart."